This week in Shelter Island history: 2002 — First Island Conservative supervisor dies

The following were excerpted from Shelter Island Reporter issues published between five and 40 years ago this week:

10 Years Ago

First Island Conservative supervisor dies

Leonard Bliss Sr., who helped found Shelter Island’s Conservative Party and in 1975 became its first candidate elected to the supervisor’s office, died February 11, 2002, in Charlotte, North Carolina, following a long battle with cancer. He was 84.

Mr. Bliss was the first non-Republican supervisor in 40 years and served two terms from 1976 to 1980.

Under his leadership, the Town Board appointed a committee to study affordable housing for young people and granted a 50 percent  property tax break to 25 property owners whose income was less than $6,000 a year. He was supervisor when the town took title to Crescent Beach in 1978. In 1979, he was instrumental in the town’s acquisition of 42 acres comprising the Shelter Island Country Club — Goat Hill — and nine acres of property on which the Ice Pond is located from the Heights Property Owners Corporation. It represented the town’s largest open space property acquisition to date.

Postscript: Together with Suffolk County, the Town is in the process of acquiring development rights of about 80 acres of Sylvester Manor.

20 Years Ago

Delays plague school renovation and additions

A winter freeze caused delays in Phase 1 of new construction at Shelter Island School designed to create three distinct areas for elementary, middle school and high school students. To avoid falling behind on the project, the school board approved jumping ahead to Phase III construction, renovations to the multi-purpose room and library converted for use as an auditorium. The change required some movement of classes for work that had originally been planned to take place during the summer when there would be no disruption to students.

Postscript: The school is poised for another renovation this summer, this time of its FIT Center that was constructed in 1997, but never received a certificate of occupancy from the State Education Department because it failed to comply with some SED requirements.

30 Years Ago

Town seeks to limit construction in coastal barrier districts 

The Town Board approved a resolution to set a public hearing to amend the zoning ordinance to prohibit construction in undeveloped coastal barrier districts without approval of the Zoning Board of Appeals. The United States Department of the Interior was in the process of identifying coastal barrier districts up and down the East Coast and had already included the Ram Island Causeways.

When former councilman Jeffrey Simes asked if the move meant that there would be no building permitted on the causeways, then-Councilman Ralph Gross said, “The Town won’t grant a permit in an area that’s a flood plain and that’s what it looks like the government is planning to call the causeways.”

Postscript: In December 2011, the Town Board adopted rules limiting development on the Ram Island causeways.

40 Years Ago

State & town talk bridge

The New York State Transportation Department Regional Director Austin Emery and state engineers scheduled a meeting with Shelter Island Supervisor Thomas Jernick to discuss the deterioration of Chase Creek Bridge that was built in 1908. The deterioration was so great that the bridge would need to be closed to traffic, Mr. Emery said. He proposed a temporary structure that would cost about $250,000 to enable one-way traffic until a permanent bridge could be built, perhaps as early as the following summer.

The proposal called for an automatic-triggered switch in the roadbed to control a light that would regulate the flow of traffic on the temporary structure. But Bridge Street merchants and members of the Heights Property Owners Corporation objected to the plan and called for a permanent bridge to be built by May 1972. By March, the state had moved ahead to acquire a bridge once used in Cartaret, New Jersey, and have it retrofitted as a temporary structure for Chase Creek. But that raised shouts among locals who questioned the viability and a new plan was put in place to use a structure that has been in service over Bruckner Boulevard in the Bronx. After many weather-related delays, the temporary bridge did open in mid May 1972.

Postscript: The permanent bridge was constructed and opened in the early 1990s.